Expert Opinion

“A half century of research has failed to find any significant relationship between teacher certification and pupil achievement. The writer grieves to admit that, especially after a long career preparing teachers for certification. The one valid measure of teacher effectiveness is pupil achievement. Home schoolers have little difficulty in equaling or surpassing the pupil achievement of state certified teachers.” — Sam B. Peavey, Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Louisville.

“But even the most attentive, perceptive, and thoughtful classroom teachers could never elicit from their students the amount and intensity of feedback that homeschooling parents typically get from their children, because parents know and understand their children so much better…..When children are allowed to decide when they will begin the exciting task of learning to read and are allowed to work out for themselves the problems of doing so…the great majority of them learn to read much more quickly, enthusiastically, and efficiently than most children in conventional schools.” — John Holt, Growing Without Schooling”

The evidence shows overwhelmingly that these children (home schooled children) perform extremely well, above average, when they re-enter formal education. That appears to be across the board, whether they sat at home and had formal lessons…or whether they were up-a-tree hippies who had no formal learning pattern. On any measure you like, socially or academically, they will do better.” — Jeff Richardson, Monash University, Melbourne

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For Updates on Craig’s brain cancer:

Updates on Craig’s health written by family
http://hef.org.nz/about-us/craig-smiths-health
and
Craig’s diary: Diary of a Brain Tumour
http://hef.org.nz/about-us/craig-smiths-health/craigs-diary/
Youtube videos: http://hef.org.nz/q-a-with-craig/

Bank account details

A number of people have asked for the Smith's bank account details to be put up on this website to make it easier to give a donation to cover medical costs:
CS BE Smith
020 727 0838357 00 BNZ
Thank you for your donations

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Post earthquake schooling options

The Home Education Foundation has been serving Christian and secular home educators all over New Zealand since 1986 through national conferences, a quarterly journal, a bi-monthly newsletter, various … [Read More...]